For many, being pulled over by a police car brings only the fear of being ticketed. But for an increasing number, the routine traffic stop brings the reality of racial targeting and potential arrest. As profiled in a recent piece in Voice of San Diego, the San Diego Police is the latest among a growing trend to use investigatory traffic stops.
Investigatory traffic stops are a form of “Terry” stops — also known as “stop & frisk” — in which an officer briefly stops an individual in order to question about the possibility of criminal involvement.
In the case of an investigatory traffic stop, a police officer — who pulled over a driver for a valid violation or based on reasonable suspicion — takes the opportunity to investigate the possibility of outstanding warrants, criminal complaints and traffic citations for the driver and the occupants of the driver’s car. The officer may also ask probing questions or may seek permission to search the car.
“Community policing is great, but we don’t have the resources to get out there and walk. Vehicle stops are community policing,” said Samuel Morales, a patrol officer with the San Diego Police Department, who was profiled in the Voice of San Diego’s piece “In Defense of Investigatory Traffic Stops.” “That’s the tool the state has given me to do community policing.”
Many that defend the use of investigatory traffic stops point to April 19, 1995, when Oklahoma Patrol Trooper Charlie Hanger stopped a 1977 Mercury Marquis for having no rear license plate. Noticing a semiautomatic pistol under the driver’s left arm, Hanger arrested the driver, who turned out to be Timothy McVeigh, who had killed 168 in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
However, the practice is being criticized for bearing a racial bias. As portrayed in a recent study by the Washington Monthly, while there is little to suggest that there is a racial bias for basic traffic stops, African-American men 25 years or younger have a 28 percent chance to receive an investigatory traffic stop. A white man of the same age bracket, in contrast, has a 12.5-percent chance and a white woman of the same age a 7-percent chance.
More pointedly, the study finds that an African-American man must reach the age of 50 to have the same odds of not being stopped as a 25-year-old white man. Overall, African Americans are three times more likely than white drivers to be subjected to an investigatory stop. This has traditionally been called “driving while black.”
And it creates a situation in which minorities feel targeted, instead of served, by law enforcement. The Washington Monthly study found that 16 percent of black respondents reported that they did not feel comfortable calling the police for assistance, compared to only 5 percent of white respondents.
Similar to stop and frisk under Michael Bloomberg’s administration in New York City, those who champion investigatory traffic stops do so in reflection of the few times that it actually stopped a major crime and in ignorance toward those the policy hurts.
According to New York State’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s investigation of NYC’s stop-and-frisk stops between 2009 and 2012, only 1.5 percent resulted in a jail sentence and only .1 percent in a violent crime conviction.